Demulsification of Water-in-Crude Oil Emulsion via Conventional Heating and Microwave Heating Technology in their Optimum Conditions

A serious problem during the production and refinery process of crude oil is the \nexistence of emulsified water in the crude oil. From the economic and environmental \npoints of view, water must be removed from the crude oil before going for further \nprocessing. In the last two decades, several demulsification techniques have been \napplied by many researchers. Since, the best method is based on the best water \nseparation efficiency. Therefore, a comparative study between microwave heating and \nconventional heating demulsification in their optimum conditions has been carried out. \nBoth methods were performed with the assistance of chemical demulsifier. Through the \nexperimental results, it was found that comparing to the conventional heating; \nmicrowave dielectric heating earned the best separation efficiency (100 %) in a short \ntime. The optimum condition in microwave dielectric heating was \nirradiation time (3 minutes), microwave power (360 watt), and 2.50 vol. % demulsifier \nconcentration. However, in conventional heating using “hotplate” the highest separation \nefficiency (96 %) was obtained at 160 ºC, and heating time 5 minutes.